Prohibition_in_the_United_States

Prohibition in the United States In the United States from 1920 up until 1933 the government tried something called the Noble Experiment or otherwise known as prohibition. This action made by the government was closely related to the temperance movement in the United States at that time. Although prohibition was put in place and it banned all alcohol, many people still found ways around it. Organized crime became a problem and they had clubs set up with back rooms that the police couldn't find so that they could still serve alcohol to citizens. Prohibition by the government was put in place in 1920. The temperance movement had been pushing to get alcohol banned since the end of the revolutionary war. The temperance movement was a group of people that thought alcohol was being abused and everyone should stop drinking all together. The temperance movement blamed alcohol for many of society's ills, especially crime and murder. Saloons in the Midwest were something that men saw as a haven. Women of the Midwest thought that Saloons were evil places where men would drink too much at lunch and have accidents in the latter part of the day or just spend all the family income there on drinks. Prohibition became a hot topic of the first World War as well. Since there were many soldiers overseas some people felt that the grain used for the huge amount of alcohol consumption should be used to feed them rather than get Americans at home drunk. Pictures were even found in newspapers that were written by cartoonists that showed brewers stabbing American soldiers in the back. (Muscoreil np.). There were temperance groups in nearly every state by the 1920 and they finally pushed the government to add an 18th amendment to the constitution. In 1916 over half of the U.S. states already had statutes that prohibited alcohol (Rosenburg np.). In 1919, the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited the sale and manufacturing of alcohol, was ratified. It went into effect on January 16, 1920 (Rosenburg np.). Soon after the Volstead Act was put in place to clarify the new amendment because the new law said that the production of alcohol was prohibited but, some products still contain alcohol that aren't meant for consumption such as industrialized ethyl alcohol. Thus this new act was put in place to clarify that beer, wine, or other intoxicating malt or vinous liquors were illegal to consume. The Act also stated that owning any item designed to manufacture alcohol was illegal and it set specific fines and jail sentences for violating Prohibition (Rosenburg np.). Alcohol was also a substance that at that time was able to be prescribed and many people ran out to the doctors to get a prescription. Organized crime in the 1920's saw a demand for alcohol and they were concentrated on fulfilling that need for many people. They wanted to make money and they had found the perfect opportunity to make a lot of profit. The gangsters had three main ways of getting alcohol for the back door clubs, also known as speakeasies, that they opened up all over the United States in big cities. The first way alcohol was bought in for their clubs was to find citizens in the United States that were producing their own alcohol at their house. The gangsters would come and buy large quantities and then have it taken to one of the back door clubs. Another way that alcohol was come by in the 1920's was smuggling. They would send gangsters to the Caribbean to pick up rum and bring it back into the U.S. These men were known as rumrunners at that time. Alcohol was also brought over the border from Canada. The gangsters would go into Canada and steal mainly whiskey from them and transport it back into the United States (Rosenburg np.). In response to the drastic up rise in organized crime of that time, the government hired prohibition agents. Their only job was to raid the speakeasies, find stills which were the home distilleries or breweries, and arrest gangsters. Many of these agents were under-qualified and underpaid leading to a high rate of bribery (Muscoreil np.). To prevent citizens from using industrialized ethyl alcohol in the production of illegal drinks the government ordered companies to add poison to the alcohol so that no one could drink it. In response to that the gangsters hired chemists to take the poison out of the alcohol or denature it. When the government found out what the organized crime community was doing they ordered companies to add more poison to the alcohol so that it couldn’t be denatured. The New York health department warned against this because they knew the health risks that humans would now be exposed to if they came into contact with the ethyl alcohol. Some ten thousand people died as a result from drinking alcohol that had not been denatured properly (McGrew np.). Soon after the ratification of the 18th Amendment anti-prohibition groups formed to get the amendment repealed. More people joined the anti-prohibition campaign than the temperance movement of earlier years. As the 1920's progressed more and more people added to the movement and the great depression was really the turning point. People felt that the alcohol issue should be taken care of by the local governments of states and counties, not by the federal government and certainly not added to the constitution. The great depression only added fuel to the anti-prohibition movement because when the stock market crashed thousands lost life savings jobs or something else that was essential to live a decent life. The argument to repeal prohibition was that opening up breweries and distilleries again would add greatly needed jobs to the hurting job market and bring help to those who needed it. Also in these times when people didn’t have a job or much money alcohol brought them some comfort when nothing was going right for them. Removing the ban on alcohol would also give the government money because they were planning to tax it if it ever did come back into the free market. On December 5th of 1933 the 21st amendment was ratified and prohibition was over. This was the first time ever in the history of the United States that an amendment to the Constitution was repealed. When Roosevelt was elected to president of the United States he vowed to get prohibition repealed. He felt that the majority of U.S. citizens were not in favor of prohibition and was not in the best interest of the country. This was just one step the government needed to take to bounce back from the stock market crash in 1929. The Twenty-first Amendment explicitly gave States the right to restrict or ban the purchase or sale of alcohol instead of leaving it for the federal government to decide. John D. Rockefeller was quoted saying this about prohibition, "When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognized. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before" (Mcgrew np.). It was largely admitted by most supporters of prohibition that it had failed to do what they thought or wanted. In the end it only made the problems they were looking to fix much worse. Prohibition was a time in American history where people pushed to get something done that they thought would solve many problems. In the long run it failed and was a nightmare for the citizens of the U.S. Many people died as a result of this amendment to the constitution, but in the end it was righted by president Roosevelt. It has become the first and only time an amendment to the constitution was ratified and then repealed. The roaring twenties was an interesting time in the United States. Works Cited McGrew, Jane Lang. “History of Alcohol Prohibition.” Drug Library. National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, 2010. Web. 18 Apr. 2010. Muscoreil, Debra Lucas. “Prohibition.” History Resource Center: U.S. Gale Cenage Learning, 2010. Web. 18 Apr. 2010. Rosenburg, Jennifer. “Prohibition.” About. New York Times, 2010. Web. 18 Apr. 2010.